From owner-freebsd-current Fri Apr 12 16:19:10 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA29601 for current-outgoing; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 16:19:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA29596 for ; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 16:19:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id QAA02790; Fri, 12 Apr 1996 16:17:31 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199604122317.QAA02790@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: /var/mail default permissions?? To: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 16:17:31 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, wollman@lcs.mit.edu, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <9604121339.AA23869@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu> from "Garrett Wollman" at Apr 12, 96 09:39:24 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > How does this API enforce RFC compliant message formats better than > > or equvalent to enforcement by any potential replacement API? > > It doesn't, and it shouldn't. Internet mail standards are based on > text manipulation for a very good reason (indeed, several). Of > course, this is completely irrelevant to the original topic of > discussion, since there is no STD specifying From_ mailbox format (or, > for that matter, any mailbox format). Which is the real problem. And even if there were such a standard (which could be defacto if there were an enforcement API) for mailboxes, a common API would help prevent accidental recurrence. > > In code whose intent is to performs identical function but which is > > yet unshared between these applications, needlessly duplicating > > massive amounts of programming effort? > > Well, if you can design an API that works equally well in C, Tk/Tcl, > and Emacs Lisp, I'll certainly congratulate you... on a marvelous > exercise in pointlessness. There is a standard (well, Proposed > Standard) mailbox-access API, called IMAP, and I don't exactly see it > as a roaring success. libmbx.so.1.0? I think that would resolve your odd cross-language requirements... Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.